Sandy

I've spent the weekend thus far in the woods and playing Halloween with family and friends.  I didn't even look at the computer yesterday.  With coffee this morning, I find Hurricane Sandy threatening the East Coast.  Landfall is still a couple of days out, but let's look at the Horror Graphic and see what the weather weenies are espousing.

That's an interesting track.  Considering that we're two or three days away from landfall, expect changes as things get worse on the coast.  What's interesting here is that a Cat 1 coming ashore in South Louisiana would be exciting, our coastline is sparsely settled as compared to the beaches and homefront construction on the East Coast.  Yeah, we've got a lot of folks in the way of any tropical storm, but not nearly as many as the huge cities on the East Coast.   Then too, we're a whole lot better at absorbing storm damage, mainly because we have lots of experience and know what to expect.

The current NOAA track shows it going ashore somewhere in Pennsylvania, with tropical storm wind probabilities extending from North Carolina to Maine.  That should tighten up some tomorrow, and while I've made quite a hobby second-guessing the weather weenies, my experience fails me in those latitudes.  With a storm that size, expect widespread destruction in coastal communities, lots of trees and power lines down,   Power outages, flooding, lots of interesting opportunities for people to do the right thing, or the wrong thing.

Remember, if you plan to evacuate, head west.  The western side of the storm is always better than the east side of the storm.  Of course in this case, heading east isn't much of a possibility.